The Mind Tardis
by merrybelated
Summary: An over-active imagination and a prodigious skill for procrastination has created the most terrible thing I have ever written.  My sincerest apologies.
1. Chapter 1

Molly slowly became aware of her body's extreme discomfort. Upon realizing where she was, she jumped to her feet. "Oh I'm so sorry, Sherlock!" she said frantically as she grabbed a messy knot of tubing. Finally finding the right one, she changed the feeding bag and started carefully moving Sherlock onto his other side.

"I can't feel my body, Sherlock," Molly said, rubbing her hip, "you probably know how that feels, being in the same spot all day. But let me tell you, the floor is not a good place to sleep."

Molly chattered non-stop away as she did all her daily activities. Finally, with Sherlock all taken care of, she opened her overnight bag and grabbed a new set of clothes. "Don't peek now, Sherlock" she said, laughing to herself.

"." Sherlock thought to himself with mounting frustration. He tried to return to concentrating on his pulse and breathing to keep the illusion of unconsciousness but no matter how hard he tried, he could not shut out Molly's constant jabbering. Hadn't he made up the favour yet? Must she continuously subject him to this torture? That joke, .day.

"Mind palace" he muttered to himself. Molly looked up thinking she heard a voice, but went back to applying lipstick.


	2. Chapter 2

The mind palace was clean, that was the problem. Over the past two weeks he ventured into even the most dimly lit rooms and organized every single last thought. Everything was labeled and organized and all excess was deleted. He had re-read every case files and had gotten almost two-thirds of the way through his library. If only he could remember the next line in _Proceedings in the Society of Horiticultural Science Vol 9_. It was ever so unlike him to forget. He had a bi-monthly organizational schedule for as long as he could remember, but for the past little while he had been putting it off. Things kept getting in the way, and embarrassing as it was, there were a few rooms he preferred to keep dusty. Dust was eloquent, he rather not disturb it. After attaching a large reminder note on the wall with a large ornate sword he found on the mantel piece, he drifted back to listening to Molly's ranting.

"…it was so awkward, Sherlock! He came down here and kept asking me why I had my makeup here and men's clothes. He almost saw you! "

"MINDPALACE!" Sherlock muttered with so much force that Molly ran to his side to check his monitor. Three hours until there was a gap for him to get some morphine. Before then there was a chance for him to get caught and he couldn't take the risk. Three hours with his brain.

He walked through the library looking for something to focus on. Shelves dramatically crashed onto the floor and books were trampled on in frustration. He had just deleted everything worth saving, all the distractions were gone. By chance, he picked up a small blue book that he must have left on a banister. Opening it, he smiled finding the only bit of his childhood that conjured up happy thoughts. Maybe he would pass the time by venturing into that locked up world again. This was verging on sentimentality but desperate time called for desperate measures.

"Crimson, eleven, delight, petrichor", he thought.


	3. Chapter 3

He stood in the shoes of an old friend. This was the one place where his brain shut off, the only place it could. As Sherlock grew up, the Doctor changed from being his only mentor in a sea of idiots to the place where he locked any remnants of sentimentality. The Doctor was an old friend who had changed and molded with him, but always stayed the same.

When Sherlock was away, the Doctor always picked up strays to keep himself from being lonely. When he came back, Sherlock never knew where, when or with whom he would find himself, but he was always grateful to the Doctor for fighting away his demons and monsters.

"What was that?" Amy asked, hearing a noise from outside the TARDIS

"The door," he replied, "it knocked."

Tentatively all he and his two companions crept towards whatever was knocking in the middle of deep space.

"Well come here, you scrumptious little beauty" A little white box whizzed around the control room and as it hit the Doctor in the face, Sherlock was thrown out of character.

It is true that sometimes Sherlock was a third party observer when he visited the TARDIS. However, he never had control of his own mind like he had now. He watched the Doctor grinning at a little white box. It had an ourobouros, the Greek symbol of a serpent eating its tail, said to symbolize life and renewal. This still wasn't explanation enough of why it knocked him out of character. Sherlock returned to listening to the Doctor

"There's a living timelord out there! And it's one of the good ones!" the Doctor exclaimed enthusiastically to his companions. Sherlock laughed at the realization that he was compiling information in his mind palace about an extraterrestrial mystery going on in his mind palace. This had to constitute insanity. Nevertheless, it was better than leaving his brain to be idle. So far he knew it was a messaging device from a timelord, one with whom the Doctor had romantic relations. He knew all the timelords were dead and he knew that their destination was one not in the universe. Exciting, really. Sherlock let his brain dull and he fell back into the story. But it didn't last long, because just as the Doctor was using bubbles and plugholes to explain the universe, a very loud voice boomed in Sherlock's head.

'Thief, thief, you're my thief!', a woman ran towards the Doctor spouting senseless words and kissed him quickly before being restrained by two people with mismatched limbs and mismatched clothes.

Sherlock thought this all very odd. He had been in a number of strange situations in the Tardis but this trumped all. Why was the voice so loud? It echoed painfully like it came from outside the palace walls, inside his brain itself. Maybe it was from the plughole at the end of his mind palace? Strangely enough, that was a comforting thought.


	4. Chapter 4

Sherlock was back in character as the Doctor. He was bitten by the mad woman and listened to her booming voice speak of angry boxes and petrichor. The mismatched people, Auntie and Uncle, told her to rest and she fainted before an ood appeared scaring Amy. Then, he fixed the ood's translator sphere only to heard the impossible calls of the timelords long past.

Distractedly, he followed the two mismatched people to hear House but as soon as he heard the planet's first intonation, he was once again thrown out of the body of the Doctor.

With uncontrollable frustration, Sherlock shouted at the top of his lungs. At the best of times, he needed puzzles to occupy his mind and a firm grip of control on his surroundings. Recent circumstances meant this was not to be, yet he had always had the peace of mind that he had the Doctor as his last bastion of security. Yet even here in the safest spot he knew, something prevented him from losing himself in the Doctor's raggedy boots.

House spoke in the same bellowing tone as the mad woman, but it contrasted drastically from the echoing tones that comfortably bounced around in his mind. He recognized House as the voice that whispered in his head when he had been too long without a case or when he nudged at the line of sentiment. Sherlock threw himself against a wall to force his mind to concentrate, yet he had long ago constructed this place as a means to escape and so reason sat uneasily here. He tried an exercise of simple deduction.

'Amy,' he said out loud, sure that no one could hear him. 'Snarky comments to Auntie and Uncle suggests a familiarity to alien planets, but stepping back when she saw the ood and heard House means she has had experiences in her travels to teach her a reflex of fear.'

'Obvious' he said back to himself with a mocking snarl, "that would be true of any of the Doctor's companions."

'Married to Rory,' he continued, speaking faster, 'confident and thinks a lot of herself, you can tell that by the length of her skirt, but has a mixed relationship with he and the Doctor. When House started speaking she stepped back and in front of Rory to protect him but looked straight up at the Doctor for comfort.'

Realizing the three time travelers had left, Sherlock chased behind them. As he caught up with him, Amy seemed to be confronting the Doctor

'You just want to be forgiven' she said to him, bluntly.

'Don't we all?' he said, after a pause. She seemed placated and willingly accepted the task of retrieving his sonic screwdriver.

The Doctor wandered off alone, sending his companions on a fool's errand to search for the sonic screwdriver he had in his pocket. After some searching, he opened the cupboard full of timelord distress signals. A pain shot through Sherlock's head. He bent over in complete agony, his hands covering the spot in his head that felt like someone hit him with a blunt object. As the panicked voices of timelords past filled the room, Sherlock could hear but one, one he instinctively knew was the Corsair.

'Instinctively?' he scoffed. Sherlock was too preoccupied by the pain radiating out of his head to dwell on the ridiculous thought he just had. Rubbing his head, he looked up at the Doctor whose calm demeanor was barely covering the burning anger from the Corsair's ourobouros tattoo on Auntie's borrowed arm.

Sherlock's head took another hit. Something about the Corsair resonated with him, but the information storage sections of his mind palace seemed to have become harder to reach the deeper he went into this world. Putting two fingers on each temple, he forced himself to concentrate but to no avail. In the corner of his mind he was still aware of the Doctor shouting at uncle and aunt and talking to Amy on the phone.


End file.
